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Facebook Friend Overload

Posted by Mike Allan | April 18, 2008 .

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For the past few days when I’ve logged onto Facebook I have been greeted with my “friends” box, the one that lists six of your friends. Nothing unusual about that of course, except, I haven’t recognized any of the names!

For the past few months I’ve just been approving every friend request that came along. The process went somewhat along these lines - “So you know me through C who knows me through B who knows me through A? No problem - I’ll accept you as a friend. Wait - who is A? Oh A knows me through D!” Which meant that almost half of my “friends” I did not know in any shape or form.

For some in the social media realm this might be acceptable and it was for me for a while, especially on MySpace; but when I joined Facebook I did so to reconnect with Real Life people. I started off with a former co-worker, then went on to a college roommate which led to a couple of former college classmates. Along the way I re-connected with family, old friends, former co-workers (including oddly enough almost every receptionist I have worked with for the last 10 years!), a couple of current co-workers (hey I see these guys every day, why would I want them on Facebook?) even an old high school crush. Oh and people who have also rescued Retired Racing Greyhounds.

I also sought out old business network contacts, then expanded to Twitter friends. After this is where it got out of hand, it was when I was on an Internet marketing kick, and I added a couple of web base marketers that my friends list exploded.

Except they weren’t friends, they were marketers and they were just using me and others in their networks to promote themselves and their products. I’m not against this of course, but in my case it was just too much. My page was filled with promotional messages and invites to this event or that group.  Oh and my groups went out of control too! I was a “member” of over 100 groups!

The logging on and seeing names of people over and over again I didn’t recognize was the catalyst for me to go on a spring cleaning of my Facebook. I thought back to why I joined Facebook and what I wanted to do with Facebook and went crazy. I am now down to 100 friends.

These are truly people I have known either in person or at least virtually by chatting on Twitter.

Now if I can keep this list under control I’ll be a happy camper!

Posted under MySpace, Twitter, advertising, editorial, facebook, in the trenches, new media, playtime, soapbox, social media | Like this article? Subscribe to our RSS feed